Playing Ball

Yesterday I was eating my dinner at a neighbor’s house when the kid who’s about 11 turned to a baseball game. Red Sox vs. Detroit, if that matters to anybody. I was personally sad to see Detroit losing 2-0 in the 3rd, but not as sad as I am to be a Mariners fan.
Ok, all beside the point. I ask the kid if he likes to play baseball and he gives me the most enthusiastic yes I’ve seen from him. It progresses and he goes and gets his glove and a ball. We toss it in the house for a bit (I’m not completely grown up yet) before I suggest going out and playing in the street. I find another old glove lying around the house and take that with me to play catch with him.
At first things seem a little bit boring and then I start throwing him some pop-ups. He gets a little more energetic and starts telling me to throw it higher and higher. I throw it in front of him, behind him, to the side, the other side, and then it hits me…this kid doesn’t have a dad nor brothers to play ball with. He told me that he loves playing yet there’s nobody in his life that he can play with. This made me quite a bit more energetic to play, neighbors were watching us out on the cobblestone throwing back and forth as they ducked a few times for wild pop flies and errant return throws.:)
I remember that when I was a kid I loved playing catch with my dad and I’m sure he knew that cause I asked him to play every 5 seconds. At the end of playing this kid asked me, “so when are we going to play again?” I was so excited that he enjoyed playing ball! I hope that we get plenty of chances between now and the end of this next month and a half here to play. Maybe I’ll have to bring back some baseball stuff when I go home in the summer.
Now, my arm is of course not feeling as excited as my mind. I haven’t played real baseball in years and I don’t think that I’ve played catch for that long since I was in high school. So much fun…

North Coast

Yesterday marked the first time I've ever visited the North Coast of Honduras and the first time that I've ever been in the Caribbean. First off, the water is a delightful temperature! Second off, I do suggest going with Hondurans to a Honduras beach if you get the chance.:)
We left Copan at 5:15am and arrived in Tela around 10:30am. It was a long trek to get there, but so worth it once we arrived. Heck, I took Dramamine and was awake for about an hour of the trip (most of that being our breakfast stop). I got to swim in the ocean for the first time in years! I don't even remember the last time that I fully immersed myself and swam in the ocean...wow, I just thought about how long it's been. Anyways, there's an old railroad bridge thing that goes into the middle of nowhere but serves as a good pier to walk out on and get a good view of the beach in both directions. For lunch we had an amazing amount of choices and I was forced to choose the Tilapia fish (I had to go with fish on the coast). It was the hugest plate I've seen in eons loaded with fish fried in Parmesan cheese, different...but good.
After lunch I didn't return to the water but instead played some soccer with the kids on the trip and read my book in the shade next to the ocean. It was such a relaxing time that we had! We left the beach at 5pm and arrived back in Copan around 10:30pm last night. All the other foreign staff stayed in Tela for the weekend so I got to ride back with a bunch of Hondurans. I sat near Eva and Lourdes and it was great. They're two of the cleaning ladies at school. They have a good understanding of my Spanish ability since I've talked with them both quite a bit and they know when to slow down and when they can talk normal speed. I think that they can read the expression on my face really well to know if I'm completely lost or not. Lourdes then decided that singing along with the Ranchero music would be a good idea and our bus driver Lino apparently agreed. Ranchero is the Mexican style accordion music with pistols shooting off and guys hooting loudly and out of control. Does that paint a good picture for the type of music? It was hilarious to hear them both singing along at times.:)
So there you have it...my first and probably not last trip to the north coast of Honduras. Oh, didn't even mention the best part, all of the trip... paid for by the school! They gave us a 100 lempira allowance of which I even saved 15 lempiras, so I got paid to go to the coast! Now, when you do the conversion, that's only 80 cents, but hey, that's a whole baleada or two depending where I go!:)

Reconciliacion y Perdon en la Familia

That was the theme of last night's speaker, reconciliation and forgiveness in the family. It was a fundraiser dinner for the Catholic church with an amazing chicken, rice, beans, and tortillas dinner followed by the priest from Santa Rosa de Copan (about 2 hours away). I was very excited about the priest speaking from the second that I saw him because he probably has one of the coolest beards that I've seen in a long time. So I thought, "well, if this is boring I can stare at the movement of his beard." It's simple, but that's the life of Copan.:)
Anyways, beard aside, this guy was the best speaker that I have heard in a long time! He involved the crowd a lot in saying things such as, "I desire to desire to forgive." I think that was from Ignatius of Loyola. Or his own creations of phrases such as demonstrating how ridiculous it is to say who holds resentment so we all said, "I am resentful. You are resentful. He is resentful. She is resentful. We are resentful. They are resentful." To add to the demonstration we got to point at I, you, he/she, we, and they. Ok, that was not the most eventful part of the evening, but it did stand out in my mind cause it was fun to point at somebody and tell them, "you are resentful!"
He talked about all sorts of issues related to forgiveness and how much better it is to forgive than to resent with regards to the friendship, your physical being, your mental being, your friendship with others, your faith, everything. My favorite part was him telling the story of his family. Isn't that always the best part? The speaker gives an example from their life and you just assume he's not making it up for emotional heart strings purposes.:) He entered the priesthood after studying psychology in college and so on top of being a priest he's a psychologist. That's like getting a communications degree and then becoming a pastor.:) Ok, so the priest's dad never wanted him to go into ministry and made that very clear to the point of not talking to him once he began studying for it. It was a pretty hurtful thing for him, his dad had several various women and was just a fairly destructive sounding person in their family. Anyways, it comes around to him in the process of dieing from cancer one August. His family took care of him while he was only weeks away from passing away. The priest's father got to the point in his illness that he could no longer swallow and so he went over to his dad and said, "You're not doing so well dad. Would you like to have your last rites?" His dad accepted and he said that it was one of the most reconciling/forgiving things that he has done to be able to send his father off and have his father finally accept him. If that didn't sound good then there are three options for why it was an anti-climatic story. 1) It sounds better in Spanish. 2) I translated it poorly. 3) You had to be there. I thought it was a cool story though.:)
Anyways, I'm going to get back to painting my new apartment. Yes, once again, I've moved...three apartment in one year. I can't keep this up forever!

Un Cumpleaños a La Copan

Tuesday was my birthday, it's true, I enjoy telling people after the fact cause then they feel guilty and get me cooler presents. Ok, that's not true. I don't like telling people because I don't like to be the center of attention. Really, I don't! Luckily I escaped with few center of attention moments. The only really bad one was going to a small group that I go to for church. I just went last week for the first time and they invited me back for my birthday (but they didn't know it was my birthday). Of course on my birthday one of the only Hondurans in the entire world that knows it's my birthday shows up and announces it to everyone there! They all start telling me, "felicidades!" The Doctor and a couple people slip out quietly and come back five minutes later with my "birthday ice-cream." Then they all start singing, congratulating me, saying how "joven" I am, only 23! Then there were the comments of, "when are you getting married?" "Wait, you don't even have a girlfriend?" "We'll find one for you, don't worry! What about Isabel?!" I don't know how my birthday evolved from a church small group to a dating show so quickly. In the middle of everything I dismissed myself to "go to the bathroom," which is code for "stop staring at me everybody!" Oh man, that was not my favorite birthday moment in the world, but hey, it's makes for a good blog entry, right?:)
The good birthday surprise came the day after, Wednesday. I get a call from my friend Suly at 5 telling me to get back to my house as soon as possible. I thought...alright...is this some bit of urgent gossip? There's not much else urgent in town other than gossip and me needing to get dinner when I get hungry and grouchy. I show up at my house and who should be at my doorstep but Suly (kinder assistant at Mayatan), Eva (cleaning lady at Mayatan), and Eva's kid Jose Adelid (second grader at Mayatan)! They are holding a cake and start singing in Spanish, "We want cake now!" We go inside, eat some cake, I buy some coca-cola (what Honduran doesn't drink it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?), and we have some cake and relax for a little bit. It was so nice of them to buy me cake and I know they don't necessarily have money to throw around on cakes.
Sometimes I get bummed out because I don't feel like I fit in that well with neither the Honduran nor the American staff but then something like this happens and I think, I totally fit in with the Honduran staff! I'm excited to be staying down here next year because I think that I will be able to have closer friendships with my Honduran friends. Oh life in Copan...:)

Cirque de Copan

There was a circus in Copan several months ago that I meant to go to but never managed. Then I hear the other day that there’s another circus here in town. I jumped at the opportunity to check out a sweet Latin American traveling circus! It consisted mainly of clowns telling jokes making fun of each other, homosexuals, and gringos. It was all pretty well done though. The making fun of each other part was…whatever, at least it was just each other. Then the homosexuals part was when they did a lip sync impression of some Mexican singer who is apparently gay and they always impersonate him at circuses. The guy was so funny though! He was winking to guys in the crowd, going up to them and singing to them, tossing his handkerchief at them, etc. Luckily he never picked me out. Then came the dreaded line (in Spanish of course), “Are there any gringo’s here tonight out there?” I just about died because there was only about 200 people there so of course everybody could see the only person above 6 feet tall! There was an awkward pause in which I thought the whole world was staring at me until I saw one of the other clowns come out dressed as a gringo and carrying a suitcase. Whew! I was saved the pressure of being picked out from the crowd. I know I speak Spanish and all that, but even thinking about 200 Copanecos staring at me makes me want to turn tail and run. I hear that this circus was infinitely better than the last one… good thing I waited to see this one and not the last one.:)

Brigada Medica

This past week a medical brigade came here to Copan from New York University in order to see as many patients from the area as they could to do some preventative treatment with them. I'm not sure the exact number of people, but I know that there were at least 240 children seen by the brigade, and I bet you upwards of over 1000 people total. I got to help out with translating and coordinating our students to help translate. It was so much fun! I have definitely decided that medical translating is the field for me, as long as I don't have to see the blood. A couple times I was called over to oral surgery where they were doing all the extractions and that was never my favorite part of the day. As long as I can stay with the screaming kids, the nervous adults, or the annoying patients trying to cut in line I'll be fine. But show me a little blood and I quit. Maybe medical translating is not for me...but I think it is...we'll see about that one...:)

Alfombras de Aserrín

The long loved Latin American sawdust carpet tradition reached Copan Ruinas for the first time (and thankfully not the last time) last year! So here I am, it’s 5:30 in the morning, I just pulled an all nighter to help build the carpets. It’s the most amazing and awesome process. We started at 6pm. Actually, I started at 7pm or so cause I was finishing watching the Honduras Olympic qualifier soccer match with Guatemala (Honduras won on penalties 6-5 and is in the Olympics!). So from 7pm to 5am I worked with only about 5 breaks for coffee and 10 breaks for the bathroom… coffee runs through ya, am I right?:)
Ok, so we first make a layer of sawdust over the cobblestone street, flatten it with 2x4’s, stomp it down on top of cardboard. Then lay down the cardboard molds over the top of the first layer…put colored sawdust on top of the original layer to make the picture, then press it down again with cardboard, and there you have it, beautiful sawdust carpets which will only last a couple hours until the procession and drunks destroy it. We had no problems with drunks destroying the carpet tonight, just drunks yelling at us, particularly any gringos helping (like me!). We had a couple of stupid dogs run through the middle of the sawdust carpets after we had finished parts of them, that was a very not-high-light of the evening. I already hate the dogs here, but they aren’t climbing up my list of most liked animals in the world quickly with behavior like that.:) At the start tourists were lined up all over the street to see what we were doing and taking pictures. Then they slowly left and we were left with like 50 people working on the carpets….slowly the numbers got less and less until at the end about 10 of us were left, maybe 15 or so. That was fun to be one of the last survivors, and I got an invitation to help next year (they said, “Hay que contratarlo el siguiente año también!” Which means, “we need to get him a contract next year!”). Ok, I’m going to go take pictures of our work now and hopefully later they will be put online. Hasta later gang!